Robust brand strategy is responsive, taking its cues from a range of places that together provide a clear and simple map for what a brand needs to do to move forward. With so many ways you could go, here’s where we recommend you look to pinpoint what’s really needed to set your brand’s strategic direction.
It’s easy to be drawn into thinking of strategy as a process or as a specific type of response or outcome. We like and use a range of models, but in doing so, we regard each as a lens rather than the answer. We may use some of it, or all of it. A particular model may be a useful reference in one situation, but not in another.
Differentiation is often described as a strategy, when in fact it should be a desired outcome. Personal, product, corporate, place and service branding are all different types of brands, not strategies in themselves. Cost leadership is an outcome or a tactic, depending on how you look at it, but not a strategy.
A clear brand strategy in our view describes the defining priorities that will take a brand forward. We take a situational approach. Firstly, identifying the key business priority. Then, the style of strategy. And finally, the scope of activity to determine the strategy we think is required.
While the choice set is simple and stable, and there are dozens of potential iterations, a brand should be able to narrow these defining priorities down to just three thoughts. Everything else that is required to fill out the brand dna, define the culture and create the story can take its reference from these three imperatives.
Decision 1: Identify your key strategic driver
Based on the situation a brand finds itself in, we’ve identified nine possible drivers to help set your brand’s strategic direction:
- Defend – this is a key driver for market dominators. The focus is on maintaining a position and perception of leadership.
- Diverge– this driver is also for established brands, but those looking to lift their revenue and presence in new or adjacent markets.
- Challenge – brands below the top 3 positions in a market may take the opportunity to redefine the category in their favour to give themselves repositioning and mobility opportunities.
- Retreat – brands that have over-committed in a category or find themselves stranded or converged upon may need to look at how they successfully withdraw and regroup.
- Establish – start up brands, or those new to a category, need a beaching strategy to get themselves known.
- Grow – brands that are placed in the middle or lower end of a market, but that see capacity to achieve critical mass in their current market, can adopt a strategy driven by growth
- Expand – digital brands in particular may focus on expanding their reach and influence, funded by investors.
- Partner – brands that have reached their potential in a sector can look to work with other brands. They can do this via merger & acquisition or partner ventures to redefine their potential. While this driver might appear tactical, it can be more than that for certain types of brands – e.g. ingredient brands.
- Sustain – again this may look tactical, but it can be a powerful strategic driver for brands that need to change their environmental, social and governance approach in order to remain competitive.
Decision 2: Recognise your strategy mindset
Different companies have different ways of executing on their strategy. It’s vital to understand how your brand will best approach the driver you have chosen:
- Deliberate – this is where a brand defines a path for its future and then pursues that strategy with little reference to what is happening around it. This single-minded approach is more common with larger, established players that have a clear vision of what their future looks like and are looking to bend the market to their will.
- Emergent or adaptive – where the brand sets an initial path, but then looks to make agile and timely shifts based on what is happening around them. The emergent approach tends to focus on being responsive, while an adaptive strategy looks to trial by experiment to decide which direction(s) to back over time. These approaches tend to be used by brands that back themselves to “meet the puck”, in terms of anticipating what will be required next and being there ready when it does.
- Iterative – where the brand acts in a more episodic way to pursue its goals. Often, there is no formal business strategy. Instead, the brand goes from one release to the next, innovating as it does so. The reference points here are often pop culture and social media, and the key requirement is to be continually interesting.
Already, it’s clear that even two brands choosing to pursue the same driver – challenge – will do so differently. For example, if one chooses to challenge deliberately and another chooses to do so iteratively. A deliberate challenger will pursue one change persistently. An iterative challenger may take a more fragmented and campaign-based approach to criticising market leaders.
Decision 3: Define the boundaries of your activities
Knowing the extent of the market for your brand is critical as you set your brand’s strategic direction. For two reasons. It defines the type of brand you are looking to build. And it puts parameters around where the brand can be found and by whom.
- Global – available everywhere. Your brand is built and developed with the world in mind – so multiple markets, multiple languages and universal awareness. The brand is consistent, recognisable and readily available.
- Regional – made for a particular geographic area and tailored to what that region shares culturally and perhaps linguistically. Some global organisations use this approach to tailor their offering to different parts of the world
- National/Local – these are brands designed for a specific national market, usually their country of origin. National or local brands draw their advantage from knowing a specific national audience better than their larger alternatives.
- Niche – these are brands that target a specific market-within-a-market. While they have lower presence than more mainstream brands, they know their specific market segment very well. They create brands that cater specifically to what their informed market is looking for.
- Cult – these are the little-known brands that are sought out by their very loyal customer base. These brands see obscurity as a competitive advantage because they are tightly targeted at those in the know. Counter-intuitively, their secrecy is their competitive advantage. To confuse matters further, some brands – including global brands – are described as cult-like because of the loyalty of their customers.
Plenty of scope within these decisions to set your brand’s strategic direction
Together, these three defining factors provide a distillation of why, what, where and how your brand intends to succeed. So they should not be randomly or lighted assigned. Some quick examples highlight just how different the resulting strategies can be: Diverge/Deliberately/Regionally is a very different set of priorities than Grow/Adaptively/ Locally or Challenge/Iteratively/In a niche.
We suggest you take the time to consider all options (and your reasons for choosing them). Once you have these guiderails, you have the most important parameters to start bringing your brand strategy to life. They will give you the confidence to define the future. Through interviews and analysis, we help identify what makes your brand intrinsically appealing. Find out more about how we can help you develop a Plan to Thrive.